(in conjunction with the UN Summit on the World Economic Crisis, June 1-3 in NYC)

Two meetings on the world economic crisis are taking place in NYC in less than a month.

One of the meetings is the June 1 - 3 UN General Assembly's International Conference on the Global Economic and Financial Crisis. On Sunday, May 31, the day before the UN meeting, the People's Economic Summit will take place directly across the street from the UN building, under tents in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza. The theme of the Peoples Economic Summit is "A NEW WORLD IS URGENTLY NECESSARY–BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT."

It remains to be seen whether these important meetings will get the same kind of attention that the U.S. and world corporate media give to a meeting of the G20--the Group of Twenty finance ministers and central bank governors. This is because in different ways, these meetings are a challenge to the domination of the world economy by the economic system and governments of the G20, especially the U.S. and the other longstanding imperialist powers that still comprise the so-called G7 nations. World events have forced these imperialist powers to incorporate the major developing countries into a broader framework that is now the G20.

The UN conference on the economic crisis, which some are referring to as the G192 Summit--for the 192 member nations of the UN--is, at its most elementary level, a response to exclusionary character of the G20 meetings. On another level, the UN meeting is an attempt by some of the more progressive governments to challenge both the hegemony of the major imperialist powers over the world economy, as well as the capitalist system.

After recently meeting in Cumaná in the Venezuelan state of Sucre, representatives of several governments including Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua issued the April 21 Declaration of Cumaná. Wasting no time to get to its central point, the Cumaná statement begins: "Capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to extinction. What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature, not another cyclic crisis."

The statement asserts: "It is necessary to develop and model an alternative to the capitalist system. A system based on: solidarity and complementarity, not competition; a system in harmony with our mother earth and not plundering of human resources; a system of cultural diversity and not cultural destruction and imposition of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries; a system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist policies and wars; in summary, a system that recovers the human condition of our societies and peoples and does not reduce them to mere consumers or merchandise."

In anticipation of the UN meeting, the statement affirms: "The solutions to the global economic crisis and the definition of a new international financial scheme should be adopted with the participation of the 192 countries that will meet in the United Nations Conference on the International Financial Crisis to be held on June 1-3 to propose the creation of a new international economic order."

Because of the unique nature of the June UN conference, a broad coalition of forces is coming together to hold a Peoples Economic Summit in conjunction with the UN General Assembly Conference on the World Financial and Economic crisis. The goal of the one-day People's Economic Summit is to bring together activists, organizers and leaders from the various movements and struggles most impacted by the devastating global crisis around the region, the country, and some from around the world--the people who are loosing their homes, livelihoods, healthcare, education and futures. These are the voices that must be heard by all the governments.

The biggest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930 has re-raised, with even greater urgency, the need for people in the U.S. and people everywhere to liberate them selves from the grasp of the capitalist system, for the sake of self-defense and self-preservation.

One of the panels during the People's Economic Summit, entitled "Another World is Urgently Necessary," will examine the roots of the financial and economic crisis, as well as the case for alternatives to capitalism and imperialism. Another panel, entitled "But We Must Fight For It," will take up the critical discussion of building the mass movement/s and formulating a program and strategy essential to the task of bringing into being a serious mass struggle for jobs, an end to foreclosures and evictions, and new rights for working and poor people.

Along with these and other panels there will be workshops on "Resisting Imperialist War and Occupation," including the central importance of the Palestinian liberation struggle. A major session of the People's Economic Summit will be dedicated to planning major protest at the Next G20 Summit, which is being planned for NYC in late September.

Representatives of progressive governments participating in the UN conference are being invited to participate in the People's Economic Summit.

The views of the governments that signed the Cumaná statement represent the interests of the overwhelming population of the planet, but it may not represent many of the 192 member governments of the UN. Some governments want to limit the UN conference to a discussion of merely reforming the world financial system. A few imperialist super-powers are threatened by any challenge to their global domination. It is not clear whether the U.S. government will attend the UN economic crisis conference, or boycott it as they did the recent UN conference on racism in Geneva.

The main importance of this UN conference is that it is a forum for widening the political struggle against imperialist global hegemony. Our hope is that the May 31 People's Economic Summit will amplify the struggle inside the UN, strengthen it and make it relevant to the struggle in the streets.